Acadian Waltz (8 page)

“Yes, it was,”
he cut in. “I shouldn’t have jumped all over you like that. Your uncle was hurt
and you were scared for him. I was out of line and I wanted to apologize for
the way I acted.”

I fidgeted in my
chair, unsure of how to respond. “Well, I’ve said some things in the past that
I shouldn’t have, but no matter what we say or do, Jean Marc, we will probably
always feel at odds with each other.”

“I don’t feel
that way about you.” He paused, and I could hear a phone ringing in the
background.

“You’re busy,” I
surmised, brushing off his words. “I just wanted to thank you for the flowers,
and I promise I’ll try to do better with us in the future.”

He sighed
heavily into the phone. The ringing stopped in the background and I heard a
woman’s voice calling his name.

“Nora, I didn’t
send you the flowers to make you feel guilty.” There was another awkward moment
of silence. “I was going to invite your uncle to stay a few days over at the
house with my mother. Momma’s got plenty of room in that old mansion, and when
I told her what happened, she insisted on looking after Jack. She even went out
and bought one of those electronic blood pressure cuffs for him.” 

“I don’t know
what to say, but thank you, Jean Marc. That makes me feel so much better. I
know Ms. Marie and Uncle Jack go way back.”

“Yes, they do.”
I heard him shuffle some papers about. “Did you know my mother turned your
uncle down for a date to the senior prom? Went with my father instead.”

“I’ve never
heard that story,” I confessed, somewhat taken aback, because my uncle always
loved to tell stories about growing up in Manchac.

“Have Jack tell
you about it some time,” he stated, just as more ringing began in the
background.

“Yes, well,
thanks again, Jean Marc. I won’t keep you. I know you’re busy.”

“All right,
Nora.” His voice seemed to return to its usual detached tone. “I’ll get word to
you when I get your uncle set up at the house. Good-bye.” Then he hung up.

I stared at my
cell phone as I mulled over our conversation. But just as I was about to put my
cell phone in my purse, my intercom beeped in.

“John Blessing
is on line one,” Steve announced into the speaker. “And he sounds divine.”

Chapter 6

Three weeks
later, John decided that the time had come to meet my parents.

“I think we are
due an evening with Claire and your stepfather. Better to make the
introductions at this point in our relationship,” he had said early one morning
while I was cooking his breakfast.

“Are you sure
about that?” I had questioned.

“They need to
meet me, Nora. It’s time.”

I noticed how
everything about our relationship seemed to be set according to some imaginary
schedule John had predetermined. But I attributed his behavior to the rigorous
demands of his medical training, and figured all residents probably approached
dating in the same way.

A few days
before our dinner with my parents, John determined it was necessary to discuss
the proper term for our arrangement.

“I think the
time has come for you and me to consider ourselves an item,” he proposed while
we were getting ready for bed.

A gentle spring
rain pattered on my roof as I eased my nightshirt over my head.

“We should agree
to tell everyone we know that this is an exclusive relationship,” John
insisted.

I pulled the
beige comforter back on my four-poster bed. “John, you have been spending every
night you’re off from the hospital here with me. I think it’s pretty obvious
we’re not seeing other people.”

He tossed his
scrub suit top on a chair next to the bed. “But we haven’t discussed it. I want
you to know that exclusive means you and me, Nora. No dating other people,” he
added with a stern frown.

I climbed onto
my bed. “You mean like going steady?” 

“If you like.”
He removed his scrub pants and boxers.

I sat back and
took in his naked body. “All right, John. If that's what you want.”

He nestled next
to me. “I’m glad we sorted that out,” he whispered against my neck. “Now why
don’t we seal the deal,” he suggested, and his teeth grazed my shoulder. “Take
off that nightshirt and let’s have some fun.”

I slipped the
nightshirt over my head and John’s hands eagerly went to work exploring my
body. As he whispered instructions to me like a motion picture director
supervising a love scene, I began to wonder if sex with John was always going
to be like this. It wasn’t that I disliked having sex with him; it was more
like I no longer felt spontaneous.

Determined to
try something different, I tried to shift John’s body to the side. “Why don’t
you let me get on top? It could be fun to change things up a bit.”

“Just do it this
way,” John impatiently muttered as he gently guided my body back underneath
him.

I didn’t have a vast
amount of experience in the bedroom, but my few previous lovers had taught me
that some degree of variety in bed helped to keep the relationship from getting
stale. But John seemed to enjoy the same old routine.

“Don’t you want
to try something new?” I asked as his hands began to spread my legs apart.

“No,” he said
breathlessly. “Now, shift your hips up to me like I showed you.”

I decided not to
pursue the subject further. I just wondered how long it would be before I began
to want more.

*     *     *

On the evening
when we were to meet my parents for dinner, John resolved the time had come to
affirm our true feelings for each other.

“I think we
should iron out the exact emotional level of our relationship,” he stated as we
headed along the interstate in his always perfectly clean car.

I turned from
the window and peered over at him. “What are you talking about?”

He kept his eyes
on the road. “Your parents will want to know my intentions, and I think—”

“Correction,” I
interrupted. “Only my mother will want to know your intentions. Lou is the
normal one.”

“Well, I think
we need to discuss how we feel about each other. Your parents will want to know
if we are serious.”

I gave him a
questioning look. “We’ve agreed not to see other people. I thought that meant
we are serious.”

He cleared his
throat as he took the exit off the interstate to St. Charles Avenue.  “Yes, but
we have never really talked about how we feel about each other, have we, Nora?
Most women want to know where a man stands, emotionally.”

“Do they?” I
shrugged my shoulders, never having felt the need to know where John stood on
our relationship. I already knew.

That gnawing
little burn in my stomach began to churn ever so slightly as we descended the
exit ramp. I chalked up the feeling to motion sickness, not wanting to analyze
the sensation any further.

After an odd
silence filled the car, he said, “I love you.” He paused for an uncomfortable
second or two as he pulled the car up to a red light. Then he turned to me.
“Now, tell me how you feel,” he insisted.

“I, ah….” I
stuttered as the burning sensation in my stomach intensified to an
uncomfortable irritation. “I love you, too, John,” I finally told him.

John leaned over
and tenderly kissed my lips. Then he put the car into gear just as the light
changed to green.

“I’m glad we
discussed that. It makes our relationship stronger,” he affirmed and directed
his attention back to the road ahead.

I said nothing
as he drove down St. Charles Avenue. I just kept running our conversation over
in my mind. I had never told a man I loved him before, but somehow I thought
the experience was supposed to be a bit more emotional. Or at least that was
the way it always appeared to be in the movies. But life was not a movie. No
matter how much we desperately wanted the fantasy, reality would always
triumph.

By the time we
pulled into my parents’ driveway, I had come to the conclusion that John
definitely had some unromantic ways about him. But I shrugged off my
pessimistic attitude and decided, what was romance between two medical
professionals? Romance was for the hapless housewife starved of affection, and
her nose buried inside some steamy novel. I could not afford such trivialities
in my life. A relationship was a business, an intimate business between two contractual
partners. Love, romance, and passion only clouded the mind and blinded one to
the harsh reality of life. We are born, we mate, and then we die. Everything
was biologically predicated on the need to continue the species, just as Darwin
had concluded all those years ago.

I looked over at
John as he turned off the engine and opened his car door. His physical
appearance was appealing, he was successful, and he was dependable. What else
could a girl ask for?

As we approached
the front door of my parents’ uptown double-gallery home, complete with white
Doric columns, long balconies, and wide french doors, I could not help but
question if some of my mother’s ravings over the past few years had not rubbed
off on me. Here was a fine specimen of a man that I had roped and corralled.
But could I find contentment in a life of branded bliss with him? I gazed from
John’s profile to the leaded glass front door of my old home.

Let’s just
see what mother thinks of this one
, I thought as the door opened before me.
The old librarian has finally come through.

“Darling,”
Mother cooed as she stood in the doorway.

She was in one
of her finer designer dresses, a shimmering silver piece that was cut very low
at her bust and fit a little too snuggly about her hips. The dress clashed with
the extraordinary amount of diamonds she had around her neck, her ears, and
about both wrists. She had even teased her usually conservatively coifed red
hair into a round bun above her head. She reminded me of a Christmas ornament,
the kind one leaves in the box and does not put on the tree. Standing behind
her in the foyer, Lou was wearing one of his ill-fitting dark suits,
thick-rimmed black glasses, and holding a glass of bourbon in his hand.

“Mother, Lou.” I
turned to John. “This is John Blessing.”

John stepped
into the rosewood-inlaid foyer and kissed my mother on the cheek. He then
reached over and took a firm grasp of Lou’s outstretched hand.

“Welcome, John,”
Mother purred as she took his arm. She walked him into the living room beyond
the foyer, leaving Lou and me to take up the rear.

“You’d better be
prepared,” Lou whispered to me. “She’s gone hog wild. Even wanted me to hire a
butler for the occasion.”

I frowned at Lou
as we entered the living room. “I knew she would be impossible tonight. Ever
since she found out John was a doctor, she’s been pestering me to bring him
over.”

Lou nodded to
John holding my mother’s arm ahead of us as Mother showed him to the bar at the
far end of the living room. “You like this one, No?” Lou asked, calling me by
the nickname he had given me ever since the first day Mother had brought him
home to meet me. “I mean, his being a doctor is great and all, but do you
really like the guy?”

I stopped and
stared into Lou’s bloodshot, hazel eyes. “You know something I don’t, Lou?”

“Nah, I just was
wondering how you felt about him.” He motioned over to my mother, who was
smiling and preparing a drink for John at the bar. “We know how your mother
feels. She’d marry him if she could.”

I elbowed my
stepfather playfully. “She loves you, Lou. You know that.”

He looked at me,
his eyes tinged with uncertainty. “I wonder about that sometimes, No.”

“You’re the only
person who understands her, Lou. I’m her daughter and I don’t even understand
her. But you do.”

Lou took a swig
from his glass. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

Mother had gone
all out for John, as I discovered when we entered the dining room to sit down
for dinner. Her best Royal Worcester china and Baccarat crystal were displayed
on top of the fancy Irish linen tablecloth she kept under lock and key. The
expensive candles in the antique silver candelabra, which prior to tonight had
been a blasphemy to light, were burning away, dripping their expensive,
rose-scented wax down the polished silver. The table even had the best of the
silver dining utensils and serving pieces laid out in an intricate array
probably not seen on this side of the Atlantic Ocean in over a hundred years.

“My God,
Mother!” I exclaimed, almost laughing at the garish presentation. “Is the Queen
of England coming to dinner?”

My mother
tittered nervously. “Really, Nora, you act as if you were raised in a barn. You
know very well I always use the best china for special occasions.”

“The last
special occasion I remember was when you brought Lou home for dinner fifteen
years ago.”

“I think it
looks wonderful, Claire.” John gave my mother one of his winning smiles, the
kind that made his deep gray eyes twinkle.

“Oh, thank you
so much, John,” my mother chirped as she came around to his side and showed him
to his spot at the table next to her. “I do try my best,” she humbly added.

“Would you look
at that, they’re already cozy,” Lou whispered as he nudged me to my spot across
the table from John.

“Everyone sit
and I’ll get the first course,” Mother commanded.

I leaned over to
Lou. “We’re having courses?”

He placed his
glass of bourbon down on the fine linen tablecloth. “I told you, she’s gone hog
wild tonight.”

“So, Lou,” John
commented. “Nora tells me you’re a jewelry dealer.”

Lou pulled his
chair up to the table. “Ah, yes. I deal in antique and custom jewelry. I have
stores here, in Houston, and New York.”

John placed his
linen napkin in his lap. “Really? I didn’t realize you were a franchise.”